In today’s world of smart phones, Facebook and Twitter, the mental focus of many has been distracted by meaningless memes and fleeting entertainment that leads minds further from their potential for developing ideas of genius.

The idea for this painting began from a few quotes in a Louis L’Amour book of the American West in which the main character speaks about his time in the 1880’s. He tells of the hardship of the great move west and the impossibility of coming west with many possessions. If they had the luxury of bringing what were considered non-essential items of great weight such as books, they would necessarily be extremely judicious about which books they brought. Only the best books were allowed, those which could be read several times and learned from endlessly.

In describing the life and times in the book Bendigo Shafter,Louis L’Amour says, “The books were opening the gates to a wider world, and in part I read for the love of learning and discovering. There was little time for it. To live was to struggle, and to keep our homes supplied with food and fuel was an unending task, allowing little time for considering things beyond the range of our daily lives”.

Later, it states, “For it was our way to go onward; to go forward and to try to shape our world into something that would make our lives easier, even if more complicated. Our struggle was for time. Our leisure was bought from hardship, and we needed leisure to think, to dream, to create.”

Thanks to the struggle of our ancestors, we can now live lives that are “easier, even if more complicated”. We appreciate an abundance of leisure that was once far more rare. The scarcity of leisure once made it precious, whereas, today its abundance allows for its futile squandering on insignificant trivialities.

This painting is meant to depict the importance of concentrating our minds and spending our time on things of great value, expanding our worlds into unknown areas and allowing for a greater development of our divine creative nature. It is a reminder that our leisure may be spent in thinking, dreaming and ultimately, creating.